And around 11:30 I got out of bed after trying to fall asleep on an empty tummy. It wasn’t working.

Cereal to the rescue!!

And then I was out like a light. I assume we’re talking a burnt out light here.

Official race photos are in! If I had known the color theme of the race was going to be hot pink,I’m not quite sure I would’ve worn it. I definitely blend in! not too many great pics – I’m rather small in a lot of them.

I’m going to be honest here – as I was looking at these today, I wasn’t all too happy. I said to myself that they weren’t “very flattering” and I found myself getting down on how I looked in these pictures. (I’ve mentioned how I’ve recently had a good amount of weight gain, and how I’m dealing with that). I was kind of put off by these. I knew it wasn’t good of me to think these thoughts, but I couldn’t help it.

Later I realized how incredibly awful I was for critiquing myself the way I did. These pictures demonstrate me running 13 miles for crying out loud. And here I was critiquing my body. These pictures prove the strength and stamina that my body has to offer. How dare I think poorly of it?

Or the post also known as: “I completely passed out on Saturday night before posting and had to combine 2 days worth of eats.” DUN DUN DUN!!! It’s on! Which long day of eats is more delicious?

But first, I have to say…I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I seriously can’t stop eating!Friday night I just wanted to eat eat eat! Definitely wasn’t hungry – but I sure was munchy! I just went with the flow and knew my body was craving something. Obviously, if I let myself eat every single time I want to – I would balloon (I could eat almost all the time). But with recently upping my mileage, and perhaps exhaustion from work – I know my body needs fuel. I’ve even been waking up in the middle of the night hungry!

Midnight cereal.

I can’t fall asleep when I’m hungry. Ever. No matter what.

Now onto the battle.

Saturday’s Breakfast:

I was starving when I awoke at 5:00 am! Scratched out my original plan for a small breakfast! And went with a yogurt mess instead.

Plain yogurt mixed with cinnamon

Honeydew (so so so so juicy & sweet!!)

Kashi Golean

Strawberry jam (RIP. I need a jam detox)

Scoops of nut butter

Drizzle of maple syrup

Mmmm maple syrup.

All mixed up!

My 8:45 am breakfast went unpictured since the lighting in the caff is awful at that time. But it looked the same as this one:

Cottage cheese + canteloupe and oats + eggs.

vs.

Sunday Breakfast:

Unlike Saturday, I was completely not hungry Sunday morning. My breakfast was still yogurt & cereal, but on a much smaller level.

And my 8:45 am breakfast snack of cottage cheese, scrambled eggs, and the iced top of a bran/carrot/ginger(?) muffin.

Orange glazed chicken, broccoli with garlic butter sauce, and turkey meat sauce which I topped the broccoli with. And also ate a bunch on the side. Kind of like soup.

And a small side salad with blue cheese, olives, & craisins.

Saturday snacks:

English muffin around 2:30.

Along with a fatty slice of watermelon.

And canned green beans + pasta sauce + parm cheese at around 4:45.

I’m a big fan of canned green beans lately. And pasta sauce. Win win!

And an Asian pear I got from Farmers ($1/lb!! Deal).

My temporary new roommate also brought apple strudel and said to help myself. She asked for it!!

I picked at a whole piece throughout the afternoon.

vs.

Sunday Snacks:

I came home, ate a giant slice of watermelon like looked exactly like Saturday’s (scroll up, or just here’s a reminder:)

And then CRASHED for a good 1 1/2 hours. I’ve gotten 7 hours of sleep combined in the past 2 nights on top of my 8 hour a day exhausting job. I’m looking forward to sleep tonight!

I awoke to have a pre-run snack of toast with PB & vanilla-pear butter.

And yes more apple strudel.

No more! It looks good, but honestly doesn’t taste that good. Not sweet enough for me 😉

Saturday Dinner:

I ended up hitting up Woodstocks for pizza with a couple friends. Normally I wouldn’t spend money, especially since I just bought dinner at Farmer’s this week. But I really really needed to get out of the house and be social.

Since the table ordered pepperoni, I got a personal half “Garlic Bird” and half “BBQ Bird” on wheat. With light cheese. But it was of course still super cheesy 😉 Exactly why I got light cheese – they layer that stuff on!! I totally didn’t expect them to do half & half on a personal, but they did! 😀

I had half of this personal, and 1 slice of a pesto veggie. Funny stury -we still had the old people’s number up from the table before us, and they accidentally re-made their pizza and gave it to us. We told them, but they couldn’t take it back. And we were left with a free half meat lovers-half pesto veggie pizza!

Okay, maybe that wasn’t such a funny story. But since the whole table seemed to be scared of veggies, I got free pizza from it.

I was trying to save room for the delicious cinnabread, which my friend got to go, but we never broke into 😦 Ahh well.

We then continued to redbox, where they decided to rent Wolfman. Which I think I slept through half of, thank goodness. It was beyond awful. And I swear, the graphics were from the 80s. I half expected Michael Jackson to jump out and rock his Thriller dance any second. My friends also convinced me to have a glass of wine, which I think aided in the sleep. Okay, not much convincing was involved.

vs.

Sunday Dinner:

Leftover pizza!! 1 BBQ & 1 garlic slice (which I took a bite out of to taste it cold) toasted in the toaster oven.

I’ve never toasted up leftover pizza before, but it was A-MAZING. Seriously, better than last night. Slightly crispy, warm, and still ooey gooey!

Plus a veggie pesto piece eaten cold while the other two were toasting up.

So in short story, the exact same dinner I had last night.

I could’ve had a glass of wine to make the nights even, but opted for hot chocolate instead.

My days were similar, my days were different. But which day’s eats look better to you? Even though they are super similar. Not gonna lie.

PS: Run was awesome 🙂 My Garmin never located satellites, so I just ran for time.

Time: 50:13Est. Distance: 5.25-5.5 miles

And I ran the ENTIRE time. I’m so happy to be back and running normally again. I thank my lucky stars everyday 😀

The morning sang with the hymns of “Long Run Day!!”. It was a dreary perfect foggy and misty morning.

Bummer for beach days.

Perfect for long run days 😉

I debated having an English muffin (look – I capitalized it this time) like before my last long run. But decided on having something more filling. Much more filling. I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite me in the butt stomach with a side cramp.

OAT-ME-ALLLL!!! That’s how I sing it. And that’s how I roll.

1/4 cup oats + 1/4 cup wheat bran

1/2 cup almond milk + 1/2 cup water (+ a extra splash of almond milk towards the end because it was too thick)

Perfect-o!! Not one, I repeat in all caps, NOT ONE side cramp during my run. I can’t remember the last time that’s happened. I set out aiming for 11 miles. Partway through I decided to do 11.5. A little farther I decided “what the heck! Let’s do 12!!”.

And 12 glorious wonderful stupendous miles it was. These long runs are so exciting to me now – not necessarily that they’re the longest I’ve ever ran (I don’t think I’ll ever go farther than 26.2 haha). But because they’ve all been the farthest I’ve ran since April 2009, when my injury hit.

Distance: 12 milesTime: 1:52.44Avg pace: 9:24

Mile 1: 8:36

Mile 2: 9:12

Mile 3: 9:33

Mile 4: 9:39

Mile 5: 9:22

Mile 6: 9:59 <– 3/4 of the mile is up a big hill

Mile 7: 9:41

Mile 8: 9:38

Mile 9: 8:54 <–1/2 uphill, 1/2 downhill – speedy me!

Mile 10: 9:29

Mile 11: 9:11 <–Getting excited to finish

Mile 12: 9:30

I want to note that I’ve kept up a run/walk pattern with most of my runs. Usually about 2 minutes walking every 1.5-2 miles or so. Today I walked 30-45 seconds (about .05 of a mile) every mile. Even if I didn’t feel the need to, I walked 30 seconds at that mile mark. Sometimes it was hard to make myself stop. But I didn’t want to regret it in the end!

Regarding hills – honestly, I live all around hills, and there are inclines every other mile. Some are steeper than others, but can’t avoid ’em! I also planned my route to hit up drinking fountains, but knew I needed some fuel. 2 problems:

Plastic baggy down the sports bra. Don’t judge. It actually wasn’t uncomfortable. I just had to make sure to sneakily take the baggy out at my breaks. Awkward.

I had 2 of these at mile 5 and 3 at mile 8.

I actually finished up 12 miles pretty far from my house. As tempted as I was to keep going, I didn’t want to push it, so I stopped and did a long cooldown walk of 1.6 miles in approximately 28 minutes. Towards the end I just wanted to get home, sit down, and eat.

Guess what! My wrap I forgot at work the other day was still in the fridge yesterday. Thank goodness 🙂

This post was meant to go up yesterday (Sunday). It looks like I wrote it, uploaded it, and then completely forgot to publish it. Shows how tired I was.

Up and at ’em at 5:00 am yet again!

I had some of my new cereal and yogurt. Plus a scoop of maple PB.

And mulitple cups of coffee obviously.

Breakfast#2 at breaktime (again – sorry of the awful lighting in the cafeteria that early in the morning).

I had some Kashi Heart to Heart with milk (it’s been so long since I’ve had normal cow’s milk!), a banana, 1/2 a blueberry muffin, and a few bites of scrambled egg.

Due to the larger than normal meal at 8:45, 2 more cups of coffee + creamer, and a large cup of water, I really wasn’t that hungry when 11:00 lunch break rolled around.

I had some steamed peas & carrots. And got a pesto turkey wrap from the ‘to-go’ section. This wrap was delicious. Turkey, pesto, mozzarella, and different squashes.

So so good!! But I was super full and only had a few bites. I saved the rest in the fridge for when I would actually get hungry.

I did have a small piece of banana bread overly sweetened shortbread with brown “banana” globs during the afternoon. Leftover from the patients’ lunch menu. It was okay. Remnants:

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I left my wrap in the fridge at work! You don’t understand how upset I was.

1. Because I was planning on eating the rest at a normal lunch time. Or for dinner.

2. Because it really was so delicious.

3. Because they might throw it away. I seriously hope not.

So instead, I had a whole wheat english muffin (is english muffin capitalized or not? Still not sure) with mixed berry cream cheese.

I was not expecting the cream cheese to be so….purpley-blue.

Eaten while enjoying the beautiful sunshine outside.

Then I decided to run some errands. Why? I’m not sure. I didn’t exactly need anything. Apple eaten on my way out the door.

I might have gotten 2 huge bottles of wine at Trader Joe’s for an amazingly low low price of $2.99.

And at Costco, I got slightly jipped on my sample. Excuse me, who eats the strawberry stem on their strawberry shortcake?

I got an ad in the male from Cost Plus this week advertising these on sale:

Having a love for anything (I mean anything) pumpkin – I knew I had to treat myself.

Cost Plus has the most amazing pumpkin selection in the world. I was in heaven (because I stood in awe at all the glory) and hell (since I couldn’t slam down my unlimited debit card and but it all).

Beer!!

Pumpkin caramel corn?!?!

Pasta sauce!!!!!!!

+ cookies, pancake mix, bread mix, cupcake mix, scone mix, coffee, syrup, pumpkin bark…OMG GUYS. I was in there staring at all things pumpkin for a good hour.

Now I also had a $10 off a $30 purchase. So I decided to spend another $20 to get me up to $30. Which would then giveme $10 off and bring me down to $20. So in reality, I would only be spending another $10 than I already was. But getting $20 worth of goods. Make sense? It does to a bargain shopper.

Anyways, I walked out with this:

+ some amazing looking vanilla pear butter, which I broke into promptly upon returning home. A little pre-run snack.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmm. I found my new true love.

Seriously. This gave me the energy to go on a bangin’ 3 mile run. Bangin because:

I felt awesome and sped through it at a fast and uncomfortable pace. I made a goal when I first set out to try and make it under 27 minutes/9 min. per mile pace. I ended up with 3.1 miles in 26:53. That would be an 8:39 average, with my max pace peaking at 6:55 minute mile. Prior to my injury, I used to average all my runs at an 8-8:30 pace. But since I’ve gotten back into running, my pace has definitely been slower. I was so proud today 😀

I wasn’t even planning on running. Yet I went out. And did it. And loved it.

I was purely motivated by wine.

Who said wine isn’t a great post-run recovery drink? I had a date with these 2 right after my run:

5:00 – ALARM ALARM!!!! Okay. My alarm isn’t that alarming. But at least it wakes me up that early. I made sure to have breakfast ready for me. Overnight oats to the rescue!! And coffee already in the pot ready for me to press ON.

My first nectarine was moldy (boooo) so I had to use up 2 this morning. At least the second one was still good!

I am obsessed with jam as of late.

8:30 – Break time! Which means breakfast numero dos (sorry – awful dim lighting in the cafeteria that early). I got some scrambled egg substitute (really meant for the diabetic and cardiac patients. But normal eggs were out). Score! There was leftover cottage cheese and canteloupe from breakfast as well. + another coffee

11:00 – Lunch break! Our lunch break is a tad on the early side, since we actually have to make and serve trays during true lunch time. Nothing on the menu looked good today, so I stuck with the salad bar:

Mixed green

Sunflower seeds

Kidney beans

Beets

Artichoke hearts

Pineapple

Couple tortilla strips

Honey mustard dressing

We actually got off early today at around 1:45 (it was a slightly slower day), and I scuttled home (scuttled Taylor? Really?) to change.

2:15 – Tummy rumbling once again! I really didn’t have any grainy carbs at lunch, so I made up for that with some cereal. And a scoop of PB in the middle.

I love to add a drizzle of syrup and some cinnamon to my cereal, depending on the flavor and sweetness.

4:00 – More work work work! At least I only babysat for 1 1/2 hours today. I did grab some grapes though.

There was one thing I knew I needed to do on my way home – and that would be get groceries!!

Sad, pathetic, skimpy food stock:

Mmmm that Mike’s Hard Lemonade looks good.

The pantry wasn’t much better.

$35 later…Oh yay – MUCH BETTER. (Ignore the empty wine bottles in the back. I only wish I bought those).

Watermelon

English muffins

Carrots

3 small containers of yogurt

2 things of almond milk

Zucchini

Cauliflower

Tub of plain yogurt

Cream cheese

2 coffeemates (large size)

Poweraide

Cinnamon

Cheddar cheese

Cereal

While it was more than I wish to spend (my weekly budget is $40, and I still want to go to Trader Joes), I know I got a good amount for what I paid! Coupons coupons coupons! Find what’s on sale, and shop the cheap stores! Budget post is still in the works – I swear! It was also a bit more becuase I bought a few extra things such as:

2 almond milks (which should last me 2 weeks) – I don’t like shopping at Food 4 Less (where I get almond milk), so I try to stock up when I go in

Cheese – I only bought it because it was on coupon for $1.69. So I’ll work my meals around it. English muffin pizzas anyone?

Right away I got to work on dinner with something I already had in my pantry. Nothing special. Nothing fancy. But something quite delicious.

Spaghettios?!?!?

Make that Annie’s P’sghetti loops with soy meatballs (found on sale at Target last week for $1! Trust me – everything I buy/eat will be on sale 😉 ). I also had some leftover chili beans chillin (I kill myself) in the fridge, so I mixed those in as well. Why not [take a crazy chance]?

Mmm these meatballs are yum.

Spaghettios was our main source of fuel when I moved into my house when I was 5. Since we didn’t have many dishes or pots and pans unpacked to cook, we relied on these canned beauties. I vividly recall sitting on empty crates in our empty kitchen eating spaghettios. Brings me back.

I ran. However, not to go buy more of this peanut flour (I still have half a bag left, thank you). But I ran nowhere. Just to run. What an odd concept.

Distance: 6 milesTime: 59:22

Some random thoughts and facts about my run:

Total average was 9:53 per mile. But my first mile was a 8:34 pace. While my my last 2 were 11:06 and 10:68. I got tired. What negative splits?

My legs were really really tired. Really.

I stopped by my house around mile 4.5 to grab a drink of Poweraide. I thought it would be easy from there on out. I was wrong.

My side muscle pain thing is gone. But it still feels tight there while on my running. Maybe I should incorporate ab stretches?

Post run, foam rolling, stretching, and icing (man I have a long itinerary!), nothing in my (weak) food stash looked good. Frozen meal?Bleh. Eggs?Eat that with what side?Cereal?Umm just had that for breakfast. Oatmeal? Hello – I am mucho sweaty and hot. No thanks.

Ooooh that melon looks amazingly refreshing and good. But I’m out of yogurt to go inside the “bowl.”

I’ve heard the rumors that you can make overnight oats in about 20 minutes and decided to try it out! In my overnight 20 minute oats:

1/4 cup multigrain oats

1/4 cup wheat bran

1/2 cup almond milk

Peanut flour, cinnamon & squirt of syrup

Topped with 2 scoops of maple PB and some strawberry jam.

I don’t think I soaked the oats long enough – they were still chewy and slighty hard. But I was honestly hungry and had no patience! That’s the benefit of soaking them overnight I guess. You’re not awake to hear the oats taunting you from the fridge “Na na na-na na. Come eat me!!”

(PPS: To everyone out there who has yet to eat a melon bowl, or is craving one now –> Get up. Drive (or walk if you’re feeling extra environmentally friendly and green) to the store – hopefully one that has honeydew or canteloupe on sale. And buy a melon. Proceed to come home, cut in half, scoop out the seeds, and eat your melon bowl. Preferably filled with yogurt or cottage cheese, nut butter, and jam. Perhaps you may had some cereal or granola for crunch. Please. Just take my advice).

I snacked on some nature’s candy at work.

And some manufactured made candy.

Apparently after drinking this drink I should be able to GO-GO and run around like a super-powered maniac.

Dinner fulfilled my veggie quota for the day week.

In my giant salad:

Stir-fry veggies

2 scrambled egg whites (random add-in)

Chili beans

Mango chutney

Sesame seed dressing

I roasted some cauliflower before realizing I had no room in my stomach for more veggies. So I saved it for a snack later in the night 30 minutes after dinner.

I woke up not hungry at all (thank you late night snack literally 15 minutes before I went to bed). So I kept it light with cereal – Kashi Golean, banana slices, & almond milk. Plus a 2-egg white puff on the side for some protein.

Super random. But it’s what they had. I wanted to use feta, but the container wasn’t open. And I felt weird opening it.

+ a peach. Juicy. And probaby organic. Not that that matters. But it was good.

Scarfed down some cocoa almonds in between jobs. Not hungry. But I didn’t want a 7 hour break between lunch and dinner.

I was literally running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off (is that true? Do they really run around after? Ugh. Please don’t tell me), and didn’t get a chance to eat dinner until after the cafeteria closed. Luckily the chef grabbed me some leftover food right before it was washed away. So I took what I could get. And it looks like I’m on the Atkins diet.

Also, luckily the meatloaf was turkey meatloaf. And it was good! I’m usually only a meatloaf fan if it’s made with a specific recipe. This one was tasty.

That fried chicken on the other hand, was nasty.

I need my comfy flip flop slippers. And a mattress. And some carbs after that dinner.

My name is Taylor (Tay) and my blog is just about the life of a recent graduate who's interested in food, health, fitness & FUN! I hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions, comments or suggestions feel free to contact me: